Create “Queen of Ice” Photo Manipulation in Photoshop

In this tutorial, I will show you the process I used to create a “Queen of Ice” Photo Manipulation. We will manipulate several ice textures to achieve this effect, as well as using a number of layer blending options and image adjustment layers along the way.

This is an intermediate level tutorial so some steps can be challenging.

Note: The Photoshop tutorial is done in Photoshop CC – therefore some screenshot may have slighting different layout as in the earlier version. Some brushes are exclusive to Photoshop CS6.

Here is a preview of the final effect I have for this tutorial: (click to enlarge)

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Step 1

Create a new document sized 700px * 1020px. Un-zip the Ice Texture Pack and load the following pick texture into Photoshop, select a portion of it as shown below:

Copy and paste the selection to our document:

Apply the following black and white adjustment to this texture:

and we will have the following background effect so far:

Step 2

Load the model image into Photoshop and select the upper body. Copy and paste the selection over to our document, re-size and position it to the centre of the canvas:

Add the following adjustment layer as clipping mask to this model layer:

Black and White

Levels

Curves

and here is the effect so far:

Step 3

We will starting adding some ice around the model. Load the iceberg image into Photoshop and select the following portion:

Copy and paste the selection over to our document, reduce its size and rotate it as shown below. Make sure it covers the model’s legs:

Set this ice texture layer as clipping mask to the model layer, and apply the following image adjustments to it:

Black and white

Levels

Use a small eraser to remove the top edge of the ice texture and make it blend into the rest of the model, as shown below:

Step 4

We will add another ice piece down the bottom of the model. Go back to the ice image and copy another piece of the ice over our document, reduce its size and flip it vertically, add it to the bottom of the model:

Add the following adjustment layers to this ice texture layer:

Black and White

Levels

and here is the effect you will have:

Step 5

We will add some smaller ice particles flying around the model. To do this, we will:

Go back to the ice stock image and select small parts from it

Copy and paste the selection to our document. Use the free transform tool to rotate, re-size them

Use black and white adjustment to remove their colour

Scatter the ice pieces around the canvas

Step 6

We will add more variety of ice into our design. Load the following ice texture from ice texture pack, select a small portion of it as shown below:

Copy and paste the selection over to our document, re-size and place it to following position:

Apply the following levels adjustment to this layer:

and here is the effect so far:

Step 7

Let’s go back the ice stock used in Step 6 and use the polygon selection tool to select a piece from it:

Copy and paste the selection to our document, apply the following levels adjustment:

Place this new ice layer as shown below: (make sure you put this layer below the model layer)

Add two more ice shapes as shown below:

Optionally, use a particle brush to paint some particles around the ice shapes:

Repeat the above process, add some ice shapes on the opposite side as well:

and here is the overall effect so far:

Step 8

For final touch-ups, I added some hair on the left with some brush painting and Pen Tool. You can check out this video tutorials here on how to paint hair in Photoshop:

I also add some some lighting effect on the arms, this can be done with a soft white brush and the warp tool:

and here is my final effect: (click to enlarge)

That’s it for this tutorial! Hope you enjoy going through it and find it useful. Drop me a comment below if you have any question.

My name is James and I have been using Photoshop since version 5.0. I am the owner of this blog and writes majority of the Photoshop tutorials and articles. If you have any questions about the Photoshop tutorials, feel free to leave a comment and I will try my best to answer it.